Download the new imperialism: motives and methods

CHAP TER
27
CHAP TER OUTLINE
● The New Imperialism: Motives and Methods
● The Scramble for Africa
● Imperialism in Asia and the Pacific
● Imperialism in Latin America
● The World Economy and the Global Environment
● Conclusion
Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY
DIVERSITY + DOMINANCE Two Africans Recall the Arrival of the Europeans
ENVIRONMENT + TECHNOLOGY Imperialism and Tropical Ecology
Opening the Suez Canal When the canal opened in 1869, thousands of dignitaries and ordinary
people gathered to watch the ships go by.
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770
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The New Imperialism, 1869–1914
I
n 1869 Ismail (is-mah-EEL), the khedive (kuh-DEEV)
(ruler) of Egypt, invited all the Christian princes
of Europe and all the Muslim princes of Asia and
Africa—except the Ottoman sultan, his nominal
overlord—to celebrate the inauguration of the greatest construction project of the century: the Suez Canal.
Sixteen hundred dignitaries from the Middle East and
Europe assembled at Port Said (port sah-EED). A French
journalist wrote:
■
■
■
■
What motivated the industrial nations to conquer new territories, and what means did they
use?
Why were imperialists drawn to the natural
resources of Africa, and how did their presence
on that continent change the environment?
What were the social and cultural effects of
imperialism in Asia?
What were the economic motives behind imperialism in Latin America?
How did imperialism contribute to the growth
and globalization of the world economy?
■
This multitude, coming from all parts of the world,
presented the most varied and singular spectacle. All
races were represented. . . . We saw, coming to attend
this festival of civilization, men of the Orient wearing
clothes of dazzling colors, chiefs of African tribes wrapped in their great coats, Circassians in war costumes, officers of the British army of India with their shakos [hats]
wrapped in muslin, Hungarian magnates wearing their national costumes.1
Ismail used the occasion to emphasize the harmony and cooperation between
the peoples of Africa, Asia, and Europe and to show that Egypt was not only independent but was also an equal of the great powers. To bless the inauguration, Ismail
had invited clergy of the Muslim, Orthodox, and Catholic faiths. A reporter noted:
“The Khedive . . . wished to symbolize thereby the unity of men and their brotherhood before God, without distinction of religion; it was the first time that the Orient
had seen such a meeting of faiths to celebrate and bless together a great event and
a great work.”2
The canal was a great success, but not in the way Ismail intended. Ships using
it could travel between Europe and India in less than two weeks—much less time
than the month or longer consumed by sailing around Africa and across the Indian
Ocean. By lowering freight costs, the canal stimulated shipping and the construction
of steamships, giving an advantage to nations that had heavy industry and a large
maritime trade over land-based empires and countries with few merchant ships.
Great Britain benefited more than any other nation. France, which provided half the
capital and most of the engineers, came in a distant second, for it had less trade
with Asia than Britain did. Egypt, which contributed the other half of the money and
most of the labor, was the loser. Instead of making Egypt powerful and independent, the Suez Canal provided the excuse for a British invasion and occupation of
that country.
Suez Canal Ship canal
dug across the isthmus of
Suez in Egypt, designed by
Ferdinand de Lesseps. It
opened to shipping in 1869
and shortened the sea
voyage between Europe
and Asia. Its strategic
importance led to the British conquest of Egypt in
1882.
PRIMARY SOURCE:
Convention on Free
Navigation of the Suez
Canal Between the European Powers and the Ottoman Empire, October 29,
1888 Read about the laws
governing the Suez Canal and
the code of conduct for parties sharing this passage.
Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
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772
CHAPTER 27 The New Imperialim, 1869–1914
Far from inaugurating an era of harmony among the peoples of three continents
and three faiths, the canal triggered a wave of European domination over Africa and
Asia. Between 1869 and 1914 Germany, France, Britain, Russia, Japan, and the United
States used industrial technology to impose their will on the nonindustrial parts of
the world. Historians call this exercise of power the New Imperialism.
THE NEW IMPERIALISM: MOTIVES AND METHODS
New Imperialism Historians’ term for the latenineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century wave
of conquests by European
powers, the United States,
and Japan, which were followed by the development
and exploitation of the newly
conquered territories for
the benefit of the colonial
powers.
AP* Exam Tip The rise
of Western imperialism is
an important topic on both
the multiple choice section
and the essay section of
the exam.
Europe had a long tradition of imperialism reaching back to the twelfth century. During the first
two-thirds of the nineteenth century the European powers continued to increase their influence
overseas (see Chapter 25). The New Imperialism was characterized by an explosion of territorial
conquests even more rapid than the Spanish conquests of the sixteenth century. Between 1869
and 1914, in a land grab of unprecedented speed, Europeans seized territories in Africa and Central Asia, and both Europeans and Americans took territories in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Approximately 10 million square miles (26 million square kilometers) and 150 million people
fell under the rule of Europe and the United States in this period.
The New Imperialism was more than a land grab. The imperial powers used economic and
technological means to reorganize dependent regions and bring them into the world economy
as suppliers of foodstuffs and raw materials and as consumers of industrial products. In Africa
and other parts of the world, this was done by conquest and colonial administration. The Latin
American republics, though remaining politically independent, became economic dependencies of the United States and Europe.
What inspired Europeans and Americans to venture overseas and impose their will on other
societies? Economic, cultural, and political motives were involved in all cases.
Political Motives
The great powers of the late nineteenth century, as well as less powerful countries like Italy,
Portugal, and Belgium, were competitive and hypersensitive about their status. French leaders, humiliated by their defeat by Prussia in 1871 (see Chapter 26), sought to reestablish their
nation’s prestige through territorial acquisitions overseas. Great Britain, already in possession
of the world’s largest empire, felt the need to protect India by acquiring colonies in East Africa
and Southeast Asia. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had little interest in acquiring colonies, but many Germans believed that a country as important as theirs required an impressive
empire overseas.
Political motives were not limited to statesmen in the capital cities. Colonial governors,
even officers posted to the farthest colonial outposts, practiced their own diplomacy. They often
decided on their own to claim a piece of land before some rival got it. Armies fighting frontier
wars found it easier to defeat their neighbors than to make peace with them. In response to
border skirmishes with neighboring states, colonial agents were likely to send in troops, take
over their neighbors’ territories, and then inform their home governments. Governments felt
obligated to back up their men-on-the-spot. The great powers of Europe acquired much of West
Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific islands in this manner.
Cultural Motives
The late nineteenth century saw a Christian revival in Europe and North America, as both
Catholics and Protestants founded new missionary societies. Their purpose was not only
religious—to convert nonbelievers, whom they regarded as “heathen”—but also cultural. They
were determined to abolish slavery in Africa and bring Western education, medicine, hygiene,
and monogamous marriage to all the world’s peoples.
Among those attracted by religious work overseas were many women who joined missionary
societies to become teachers and nurses. Although they did not challenge colonialism directly,
their influence often helped soften the harshness of colonial rule—for example, by calling attention to issues of maternity and women’s health. Mary Slessor, a British missionary who lived for
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The New Imperialism: Motives and Methods
Africa
Asia and the Pacific
773
Latin America
1862–1895 French conquer Indochina
1870
1869 Opening of the Suez Canal
1865–1876 Russian forces advance into
Central Asia
1874 Warfare between Britain and
Asante (Gold Coast)
1877–1879 Warfare between Britain and
the Xhosa and the Zulu (South Africa)
1870–1910 Railroad building boom in
Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico
1878 United States obtains Pago Pago
Harbor (Samoa)
1882 British forces occupy Egypt
1884–1885 Berlin Conference; Leopold II 1885 Britain completes conquest of
obtains Congo Free State
Burma
1887 United States obtains Pearl Harbor
(Hawaii)
1890
1896 Ethiopians defeat Italian army at
Adowa
1898 Battle of Omdurman
1900
1899–1902 South African War between
Afrikaners and British
1902 First Aswan Dam completed
(Egypt)
1910
1908 Belgium annexes Congo
1894–1895 China defeated in SinoJapanese War
1895–1898 Cubans revolt against
Spanish rule
1898 United States annexes Hawaii and 1898 Spanish-American War; United
Guam and purchases Philippines from States annexes Puerto Rico and
Hawaii
Spain
1899–1902 U.S. forces conquer and
1901 United States imposes Platt
occupy Philippines
Amendment on Cuba
1903 Russia completes Trans-Siberian
Railway
1903 United States backs secession
of Panama from Colombia
1904–1905 Russia defeated in RussoJapanese War
1904–1907, 1916 U.S. troops occupy
Dominican Republic
1904–1914 United States builds
Panama Canal
1912 U.S. troops occupy Nicaragua
and Honduras
Racism
forty years among the people of southeastern Nigeria, campaigned against slavery, human sacrifice, and the killing of twins and, generally, for women’s rights. In India missionaries denounced
the customs of child marriages and sati (the burning of widows on their husbands’ funeral
pyres). Such views often clashed with the customs of the people among whom they settled.
The sense of moral duty and cultural superiority was not limited to missionaries. Many
Europeans and Americans equated technological innovations with progress. They believed that
Western technology proved the superiority of Western ideas, customs, and culture. More harmful were racist ideas that relegated non-Europeans to a status of permanent inferiority. Racists
assigned different stages of biological development to peoples of different races and cultures
(see Chapter 26). They divided humankind into several races based on physical appearance and
ranked these races in a hierarchy that ranged from “civilized” down through “semibarbarous,”
“barbarian,” and finally, at the bottom, “savage.” Whites were always at the top of this ranking.
Such ideas were often presented as an excuse for permanent rule over Africans and Asians.
Young men, finding few opportunities for adventure and glory at home in an era of peace,
sought them overseas. At first, European people and parliaments were indifferent or hostile to
overseas adventures, but a few easy victories in the 1880s helped to overcome their reluctance. The
United States was fully preoccupied with its westward expansion until the 1880s, but in the 1890s
popular attention shifted to lands outside U.S. borders. Newspapers, which achieved wide readership in the second half of the nineteenth century, discovered that they could boost circulation
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Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
774
CHAPTER 27 The New Imperialim, 1869–1914
with reports of wars and conquests. By the 1890s imperialism was a popular cause, the overseas
extension of the nationalism of the time.
Economic Motives
The industrialization of Europe and North America stimulated the demand for minerals—
copper for electrical wiring, tin for canning, chrome and manganese for the steel industry, coal
for steam engines, and, most of all, gold and diamonds. The demand for such industrial crops
as cotton and rubber and for stimulants such as sugar, coffee, tea, and tobacco also grew. These
products were found in the tropics, but never in sufficient quantities.
An economic depression lasting from the mid-1870s to the mid-1890s caused European
businessmen to seek protection against foreign competition (see below). They argued that their
respective countries needed secure sources of tropical raw materials and protected markets for
their industries. Declining business opportunities at home prompted entrepreneurs and investors to look for profits in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Since investment in countries so different from their own was extremely risky, businessmen sought the backing of their governments,
preferably with soldiers.
These reasons explain why Europeans and Americans wished to expand their influence
over other societies. Yet motives do not adequately explain the events of that time. What made it
possible to conquer a piece of Africa, convert the “heathen,” and start plantations was the sudden increase in the power that industrial peoples could wield over nonindustrial peoples and
over the forces of nature. Technological advances explain both the motives and the outcome of
the New Imperialism.
The Tools of the Imperialists
Shipping
Gunboats
Firearms
Battle of Omdurman British
victory over the Mahdi in
the Sudan in 1898. General
Kitchener led a mixed force
of British and Egyptian
troops armed with rapidfiring rifles and machine
guns.
To succeed, empire builders needed the means to achieve their objectives at a reasonable cost.
These means were provided by the Industrial Revolution (see Chapter 22). In the early nineteenth century technological innovations began to tip the balance of power in favor of Europe.
Europeans had dominated the oceans since about 1500, and their naval power increased
still more with the introduction of steamships. The first steamer reached India in 1825 and was
soon followed by regular mail service in the 1830s. The building of the Suez Canal and the development of increasingly efficient engines led to a boom in shipping to the Indian Ocean and East
Asia. Submarine telegraph cables connected Europe with North America in the 1860s, with Latin
America and Asia in the 1870s, with Africa in the 1880s, and finally across the Pacific in 1904.
Europeans used gunboats with considerable success in China, Burma, Indochina, and the
Congo Basin. Although gunboats opened the major river basins to European penetration, the
invaders often found themselves hampered by other natural obstacles. Falciparum malaria,
found only in Africa, was so deadly to Europeans that few explorers survived before the 1850s.
In 1854 a British doctor discovered that the drug quinine, taken regularly during one’s stay in
Africa, could prevent the disease. This and a few sanitary precautions reduced the annual death
rate among whites in West Africa from between 250 and 750 per thousand in the early nineteenth century to between 50 and 100 per thousand after 1850. This reduction was sufficient to
open the continent to merchants, officials, and missionaries.
The development of new and much deadlier firearms in the 1860s and 1870s shifted the
balance of power on land between Westerners and other peoples. One of these was the breechloader, which could be fired accurately ten times as fast as, and five or six times farther than, a
musket. By the 1870s all armies in Europe and the United States had switched to these new rifles.
Repeating rifles could shoot fifteen rounds in fifteen seconds. In the 1890s European and American armies began using machine guns, which could fire eleven bullets per second. As European
firearms improved, the firepower gap widened, making colonial conquests easier than ever
before. By the 1880s and 1890s European-led forces of a few hundred could defeat non-European
armies of thousands. Against the latest weapons, African and Asian soldiers armed with muskets
or spears did not stand a chance, no matter how numerous and courageous they were.
A classic example is the Battle of Omdurman in Sudan. On September 2, 1898, forty thousand Sudanese attacked an Anglo-Egyptian expedition that had come up the Nile on six steamers and four other boats to avenge the defeat of General Charles Gordon in 1885 (see Chapter
24). General Horatio Kitchener’s troops had twenty machine guns and four artillery pieces; the
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Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
The Art Archive
The Battle of Omdurman In the late nineteenth century, most battles between European-led troops and African forces were
one-sided encounters because of the disparity in the opponents’ firearms and tactics. The Battle of Omdurman in Sudan in
1898 is a dramatic example. The forces of the Mahdi, some on horseback, were armed with spears and single-shot muskets.
The British troops and their Egyptian allies, lined up in the foreground, used repeating rifles and machine guns able to shoot
much farther than the Sudanese weapons. As a result, there were many Sudanese casualties but very few British and Egyptian
casualties.
Sudanese were equipped with muskets and spears. Within a few hours eleven thousand Sudanese and forty-eight British lay dead.
Colonial Agents and Administration
colonialism Policy by which
a nation administers a foreign territory and develops
its resources for the benefit
of the colonial power.
White Settlers
Once colonial agents took over a territory, their home government expected them to cover their
own costs and, if possible, return some profit to the home country. The system of administering
and exploiting colonies for the benefit of the home country is known as colonialism. In some
cases, such as along the West African coast or in Indochina, there was already a considerable
trade that could be taxed. In other places profits could come only from investments and a thorough reorganization of the indigenous societies. In applying modern scientific and industrial
methods to their colonies, colonialists started the transformation of Asian and African societies
and landscapes that has continued to our day.
One important factor was the presence or absence of European settlers. In Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, whites were already in the majority by 1869, and Britain encouraged
them to elect parliaments and rule themselves. Where European settlers were numerous but
still a minority of the population, as in Algeria and South Africa, settlers and the home country struggled for control over the indigenous population. In colonies with few white settlers, the
European governors ruled autocratically.
In the early years of the New Imperialism, colonial administrations consisted of a governor
and his staff, a few troops to keep order, and a small number of tax collectors and magistrates.
Nowhere could colonialism operate without the cooperation of indigenous elites, because no
colony was wealthy enough to pay the salaries of more than a handful of European officials. In
most cases the colonial governors exercised power through traditional rulers willing to cooperate.
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776
CHAPTER 27 The New Imperialim, 1869–1914
Eileen Tweedy/The Art Archive
A Colonial Lady In many tropical colonies in the nineteenth
century, there were few good
roads, but labor was abundant.
European colonial officials and
their wives often traveled in a
tonjon, or sedan chair carried by
porters. This image of a lady in
India dates from 1828.
Colonial governments also educated a few local youths for “modern” jobs as clerks, nurses, policemen, customs inspectors, and the like. Thus colonialism relied on two rival indigenous elites.
White Women
European and American women seldom took part in the early stages of colonial expansion.
As conquest gave way to peaceful colonialism and as steamships and railroads made travel less
difficult, colonial officials and settlers began bringing their wives to the colonies. The arrival
of white women in Asia and Africa led to increasing racial segregation. Sylvia Leith-Ross, wife
of a colonial officer in Nigeria, explained: “When
SECTION REVIEW
you are alone, among thousands of unknown,
unpredictable people, dazed by unaccustomed
● From 1864 to 1914 Europeans and Americans conquered 10 milsights and sounds, bemused by strange ways of life
lion square miles and 150 million people.
and thought, you need to remember who you are,
● The European powers were motivated by political rivalries.
where you come from, what your standards are.”3
Many
colonial wives found themselves in com● Missionaries and the press supported the conquests. So did
mand
of
numerous servants and expected to follow
businessmen eager to invest capital, sell their products, and
the
complex
etiquette of colonial entertainment in
obtain raw materials.
support of their husbands’ official positions. Some
● New industrial technologies—gunboats, rifles, and quinine—
found opportunities to exercise personal initiamade it possible for Europeans to conquer other lands.
tive, usually charitable work involving indigenous
women and children. However well meaning, their
● Colonial agents transformed the societies and peoples they
efforts were always subordinate to the work of
ruled; white women participated in the enterprise.
men.
THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA
“scramble” for Africa Sudden wave of conquests in
Africa by European powers
in the 1880s and 1890s. Britain obtained most of eastern
Africa, France most of northwestern Africa. Other countries (Germany, Belgium,
Portugal, Italy, and Spain)
acquired lesser amounts.
Until the 1870s African history was largely shaped by internal forces and the spread of Islam (see
Chapter 25). Outside Algeria and southern Africa, only a handful of Europeans had ever visited
the interior of Africa, and European countries possessed only small enclaves on the coasts. As
late as 1879 Africans ruled more than 90 percent of the continent. Then, within a decade, Africa
was invaded and divided among the European powers in a movement often referred to as the
“scramble” for Africa (see Map 27.1). Let us look at the most significant cases, beginning with
Egypt, the wealthiest and most populated part of the continent.
Egypt
Ironically, European involvement in Egypt resulted from Egypt’s attempt to free itself from Ottoman rule. Throughout the mid-nineteenth century the khedives of Egypt had tried to modernize their armed forces; build canals, harbors, railroads, and other public works; and reorient
Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
0°
an
ea
n
TUNISIA
Sea
Italian
Cyrene
Tripoli
b
biArabiha
a
Pasha
82
1881–1882
Sanusi
L I B Y A 1912–1913
AF R
IAL
UA
TO
R
EQ
Bunyoro
1890–1898
UGANDA
CH
R.
N i le R .
SPANISH GUINEA
Uele R.
Congo
EN
São Tomé
Tutsi and Hutu
FR
(Portugal)
ETH IOP IA
BRITISH
SOMALILAND
Sayyid Muhammad
1891–1920
BRITISH
EAST AFRICA
I
0° Equator
L. Victoria
B ELGIAN 1911–1917
L. Tanganyika
CONGO
GERMAN
EAST AFRICA
NDA
CABINDA
CAB
B IND
FRENCH
SOMALILAND
Mombasa
Abushiri 1888–1889
Zanzibar (Gr. Br.)
Hehe 1891–1898
Maji-Maji
1905–1907
ALGERIA
EGYPT
ANGOL A
L. Nyasa
NORTHERN
RHODESIA zi R.
e
Za
m
NYASALAND
Shona
1896–1903
SOUTHERN
RHODESIA MOZAMBIQUE
R.
Herero
19
1
1904–1908
Congo R
.
Ndebele
GERMAN
1896
SOUTHWEST BECHUANALAND
AFRICA
TRANSVAAL
Nama
SWAZILAND
1905–1909
Bambata1906–1908
ORANGE
FREE STATE
Isandhlwana 1879
BASUTOLAND
A
UNION OF
AT
SOUTH AFRICA N
20°S
Tropic of Capricorn
N
L
0°
b
AR
20°N
SC
A
GA
R
DA
A
I N D I A N
O C E A N
MA
.
H
r
ge
Ni
SENEGAL
A
Nile
R
S
ND
Fashoda
K AM ER U N
Adowa
1896
R.
Ijebu 1892
S. NIGERIA
ERITREA
ILA
ANGLO-EGYPTIAN
SUDAN
ICA
L. Chad
(Spain)
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
20°N
a
Omdurman
1898
Khartoum 1884
NORTH ER N
N IGER IA
Fernando Po
Se
Rabih
1892–1900
W hi t e
IVORY GOLD
COAST COAST
LIBERIA
TO G O L A N D
1881– 1892–
1892 1898
Asante
1900
Sokoto
1900
ARABIA
hdi
Mahdists
ile
eN
R.
Fon
1892
d
.
Samori
cer
Tropic of Can
Blu
lR
er
Nig
ga
PORTUGUESE
GUINEA
Bai Bureh 1898
SIERRA LEONE
Nile R.
n
Se
GAMBIA
A
R
AFRICA
WEST
FRENCH
e
A
H
A
S
Asw
sw
wan
n
Aswan
ki
ki
shk
Tushki
88
89
1889
Re
GYPT
GY
P
PT
EGYPT
Selected sites of
African resistance to
European occupation
AL
ALGER IA
RIO DE ORO
Major battle
Portuguese
o
Ca
Cai
C
airro
ai
Cairo
M
(Spain)
Spanish
Independent African
states
German
IFNI
Canary Is.
Belgian
French
SO
MOROCCO
British
N
Algiers
Casablanca
(Portugal)
60°E
°N
40°N
IA
Mediterr
Tangier
Madeira Is.
40
0E
40°E
20°E
SPANISH
MOROCCO
TA
L
20°W
20°S
Cape Town
COLONIAL PRESENCE
IN AFRICA, 1878
20°W
0°
CAPE
COLONY
20°E
0
0
800 Km.
40°E
0
0
400
800 Km.
400
800 Mi.
800 Mi.
© Cengage Learning
MAP 27.1 Africa in 1878 and 1914 In 1878 the European colonial presence was limited to a few coastal enclaves, plus portions of Algeria and South Africa. By 1914, Europeans had taken over all of Africa except Ethiopia and Liberia.
Interactive Map
agriculture toward export crops, especially cotton (see Chapters 22 and 25). Their interest in the
Suez Canal was also part of this policy. Khedive Ismail even tried to make Egypt the center of an
empire reaching south into Sudan and Ethiopia.
These ambitions cost vast sums of money, which the khedives borrowed from European
creditors at high interest rates. By 1876 Egypt’s foreign debt had risen to £100 million sterling,
and the interest payments alone consumed one-third of its foreign export earnings. To avoid
bankruptcy the Egyptian government sold its shares in the Suez Canal to Great Britain and
accepted four foreign “commissioners of the debt” to oversee its finances. French and British
bankers, still not satisfied, lobbied their governments to secure the loans by stronger measures.
In 1878 the two governments obliged Ismail to appoint a Frenchman as minister of public works
and a Briton as minister of finance. When high taxes caused hardship and popular discontent,
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Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
778
CHAPTER 27 The New Imperialim, 1869–1914
Britain Occupies Egypt
Henry Morton Stanley
British-American explorer of
Africa, famous for his expeditions in search of Dr. David
Livingstone. Stanley helped
King Leopold II establish the
Congo Free State.
King Leopold II King of Belgium (r. 1865–1909). He was
active in encouraging the
exploration of Central Africa
and became the ruler of the
Congo Free State (to 1908).
Savorgnan de Brazza
Franco-Italian explorer sent
by the French government
to claim part of equatorial
Africa for France. Founded
Brazzaville, capital of the
French Congo, in 1880.
The Berlin Conference
Berlin Conference Conference that German chancellor
Otto von Bismarck called to
set rules for the partition of
Africa. It led to the creation
of the Congo Free State
under King Leopold II of
Belgium.
AP* Exam Tip Be able
to compare the colonial
administration of African
colonies with the colonial
administration of Indian
and Asian colonies.
the French and British persuaded the Ottoman sultan to depose Ismail. This foreign intervention provoked a military uprising under Egyptian army colonel Arabi Pasha, which threatened
the Suez Canal.
Fearing for their investments, the British sent an army into Egypt in 1882. So important was
the Suez Canal to Britain’s maritime supremacy that they stayed for seventy years. During those
years the British ruled Egypt “indirectly”—that is, they maintained the Egyptian government
and the fiction of Egyptian sovereignty but retained real power in their own hands.
Eager to develop Egyptian cotton production, the British brought in engineers and contractors to build the first dam across the Nile, at Aswan in upper Egypt. When completed in 1902, it
captured the annual Nile flood and released its waters throughout the year, allowing farmers
to grow two, sometimes three, crops a year. The economic development of Egypt by the British
enriched a small elite of landowners and merchants, many of them foreigners. Egyptian peasants
got little relief from the heavy taxes collected to pay for their country’s crushing foreign debt and
the expenses of the British army of occupation. Western ways that conflicted with the teachings
of Islam—such as the drinking of alcohol and the relative freedom of women—offended Muslim
religious leaders. Most Egyptians found British rule more onerous than that of the Ottomans. By
the 1890s Egyptian politicians and intellectuals were demanding that the British leave.
Western and Equatorial Africa
While the British were taking over Egypt, the French were planning to extend their empire into
the interior of West Africa. Starting from the coast of Senegal, which had been in French hands
for centuries, they hoped to build a railroad from the upper Senegal River to the upper Niger in
order to open the interior to French merchants. This in turn led the French military to undertake
the conquest of western Sudan.
Meanwhile, the actions of three individuals, rather than a government, brought about the
occupation of the Congo Basin, an enormous forested region in the heart of equatorial Africa
(see Map 27.1). In 1879 the American journalist Henry Morton Stanley, who had explored the
area (see Chapter 25), persuaded King Leopold II of Belgium to invest his personal fortune in
“opening up” equatorial Africa. With Leopold’s money, Stanley returned to Africa from 1879 to
1884 to establish trading posts along the southern bank of the Congo River. At the same time,
Savorgnan de Brazza, an Italian officer serving in the French army, obtained from an African
ruler living on the opposite bank a treaty that placed the area under the “protection” of France.
These events sparked a flurry of diplomatic activity. German chancellor Bismarck called the
Berlin Conference on Africa of 1884 and 1885. There the major powers agreed that henceforth
“effective occupation” would replace the former trading relations between Africans and Europeans. Every country with colonial ambitions had to send troops into Africa and participate in the
division of the spoils. As a reward for triggering the “scramble” for Africa, Leopold II acquired a
personal domain under the name “Congo Free State,” while France and Portugal took most of
the rest of equatorial Africa. In this manner, the European powers and King Leopold managed
to divide Africa among themselves, at least on paper.
“Effective occupation” required many years of effort. In the interior of West Africa, Muslim
rulers resisted the French invasion for up to thirty years. The French advance encouraged the
Germans to stake claims to parts of the region and the British to move north from their coastal
enclaves, until the entire region was occupied by Britain, France, and Germany.
Because West Africa had long had a flourishing trade, the new rulers took advantage of
existing trade networks, taxing merchants and farmers, investing the profits in railroads and
harbors, and paying dividends to European stockholders. In the Gold Coast (now Ghana) British trading companies bought the cocoa grown by African farmers at low prices and resold it for
large profits. The interior of French West Africa lagged behind. Although the region could produce cotton, peanuts, and other crops, the difficulties of transportation limited its development
before 1914.
Compared to West Africa, equatorial Africa had few inhabitants and little trade. Rather
than try to govern these vast territories directly, authorities in the Congo Free State, the French
Congo, and the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique farmed out huge pieces of land
to private concession companies, offering them monopolies on the natural resources and trade
of their territories and the right to employ soldiers and tax the inhabitants. Freed from outside
supervision, the companies forced the African inhabitants at gunpoint to produce cash crops
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779
From H. M. Stanley, The Congo, vol. 2, London, 1885
The Scramble for Africa
A Steamboat for the Congo River Soon after the Congo Basin was occupied by Europeans, the new colonial rulers realized
they needed to improve transportation. Since access from the sea was blocked by rapids on the lower Congo River, steamboats
had to be brought in sections, hauled from the coast by thousands of Congolese over very difficult terrain. This picture shows
the pieces arriving at Stanley Pool, ready to be reassembled.
and carry them, on their heads or backs, to the nearest railroad or navigable river. The worst
abuses took place in the Congo Free State, where a rubber boom made it profitable for private
companies to coerce Africans to collect latex from vines that grew in the forests. One Congolese
refugee told the British consul Roger Casement who investigated the atrocities:
We begged the white men to leave us alone, saying we could get no more rubber, but the
white men and their soldiers said: “Go. You are only beasts yourselves, you are only nyama
(meat).” We tried, always going further into the forest, and when we failed and our rubber
was short, the soldiers came to our towns and killed us. Many were shot, some had their ears
cut off; others were tied up with ropes around their necks and bodies and taken away.4
Afrikaners South Africans
descended from Dutch and
French settlers of the seventeenth century. Their Great
Trek founded new settler
colonies in the nineteenth
century. Though a minority
among South Africans, they
held political power after
1910, imposing a system of
racial segregation called
apartheid after 1949.
Diamonds
After 1906 the British press began publicizing the horrors. The public outcry that followed, coinciding with the end of the rubber boom, convinced the Belgian government to take over Leopold’s private empire in 1908.
Southern Africa
The history of southern Africa between 1869 and 1914 differs from that of the rest of the continent in several important respects. One was that the land had long attracted settlers. African
pastoralists and farmers had inhabited the region for centuries. Afrikaners, descendants of
Dutch settlers on the Cape of Good Hope, moved inland throughout the nineteenth century;
British prospectors and settlers arrived later in the century; and, finally, Indians were brought
over by the British and stayed.
Southern Africa attracted European settlers because of its good pastures and farmland and
its phenomenal deposits of diamonds, gold, and copper, as well as coal and iron ore. This was
the new El Dorado that imperialists had dreamed of since the heyday of the Spanish Empire.
The discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in 1868 lured thousands of European prospectors
as well as Africans looking for work. Great Britain, colonial ruler of the Cape Colony, annexed
the diamond area in 1871, angering the Afrikaners. Once in the interior, the British defeated the
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780
CHAPTER 27 The New Imperialim, 1869–1914
Cecil Rhodes British
entrepreneur and politician
involved in the expansion
of the British Empire from
South Africa into Central
Africa. The colonies of
Southern Rhodesia (now
Zimbabwe) and Northern
Rhodesia (now Zambia) were
named after him.
Britain Versus Afrikaners
Xhosa (KOH-sah) people in 1877 and 1878. Then in 1879 they confronted the Zulu, militarily the
most powerful of the African peoples in the region.
The Zulu, led by their king Cetshwayo (set-SHWAH-yo), resented their encirclement by
Afrikaners and British. Their proud military tradition led them into a war with the British in
1879. They defeated the British at Isandhlwana (ee-sawn-dull-WAH-nuh), but a few months
later they were in turn defeated. Cetshwayo was captured and sent into exile, and the Zulu lands
were given to white ranchers. Yet throughout those bitter times, the Zulu’s sense of nationhood
remained strong.
Relations between the British and the Afrikaners, already tense as a result of British
encroachment, took a turn for the worse when gold was discovered in the Afrikaner republic of
Transvaal (trans-VAHL) in 1886. In the gold rush that ensued, the British soon outnumbered the
Afrikaners.
Britain’s invasion of southern Africa was driven in part by the ambition of Cecil Rhodes
(1853–1902), who once declared that he would “annex the stars” if he could. Rhodes made his
fortune in the Kimberley diamond fields, founding De Beers Consolidated, a company that has
dominated the world’s diamond trade ever since. He then turned to politics. He encouraged a
concession company, the British South Africa Company, to push north into Central Africa, where
he named two new colonies after himself: Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Northern
Rhodesia (now Zambia). The Ndebele (en-duh-BELL-ay) and Shona peoples, who inhabited the
region, resisted this invasion, but the machine guns of the British finally defeated them.
British attempts to annex the two Afrikaner republics, Transvaal and Orange Free State,
and the inflow of English-speaking whites into the gold- and diamond-mining areas led to the
South African War, which lasted from 1899 to 1902. At first the Afrikaners had the upper hand,
for they were highly motivated, possessed modern rifles, and knew the land. In 1901, however,
Great Britain brought in 450,000 troops and crushed the Afrikaner armies. Ironically, the Afrikaners’ defeat in 1902 led to their ultimate victory. Wary of costly commitments overseas, the
British government expected European settlers in Africa to manage their own affairs, as they
were doing in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Thus, in 1910 the European settlers created
the Union of South Africa, in which the Afrikaners eventually emerged as the ruling element.
Unlike Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, South Africa had a majority of indigenous
inhabitants and substantial numbers of Indians and “Cape Coloureds” (people of mixed ancestry). Yet the Europeans were both numerous enough to demand self-rule and powerful enough
to deny the vote and other civil rights to the majority. In 1913 the South African parliament
passed the Natives Land Act, assigning Africans to reservations and forbidding them to own
land elsewhere. This and other racial policies turned South Africa into a land of segregation and
oppression.
Political and Social Consequences
Collaborators
and Resisters
Asante African kingdom
on the Gold Coast that
expanded rapidly after 1680.
Asante participated in the
Atlantic economy, trading
gold, slaves, and ivory. It
resisted British imperial
ambitions for a quarter century before being absorbed
into Britain’s Gold Coast
colony in 1902.
At the time of the European invasion, Africa contained a wide variety of societies. Some parts
of the continent had long-established kingdoms with aristocracies or commercial towns
dominated by a merchant class. In other places agricultural peoples lived in villages without
any outside government. Elsewhere pastoral nomads were organized along military lines. In
some remote areas people lived from hunting and gathering. Not surprisingly, these societies
responded in very different ways to the European invasion.
Some peoples welcomed the invaders as allies against local enemies. Once colonial rule
was established, they sought work in government service or in European firms and sent their
children to mission schools. In exchange, they were often the first to receive benefits such as
clinics and roads. Peoples with a pastoral or a warrior tradition, however, fought tenaciously.
Examples abound, from the Zulu and Ndebele of southern Africa to the pastoral Herero (hairAIR-oh) people of Southwest Africa (now Namibia), who rose up against German invaders in
1904; in repressing their uprising, the Germans exterminated two-thirds of them. In the Sahel,
a belt of grasslands south of the Sahara, charismatic leaders rose up in the name of a purified
Islam, gathered a following of warriors, and led them on part religious, part empire-building
campaigns called jihads. All of them eventually came into conflict with European-led military
expeditions and were defeated.
Some commercial states with long histories of contact with Europeans also fought back. The
kingdom of Asante (uh-SHAWN-tee) in Gold Coast rose up in 1874, 1896, and 1900 before it was
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The Scramble for Africa
781
National Archives
Victorious Ethiopians Among the
states of Africa, Ethiopia alone was
able to defend itself against European
imperialism. In the 1880s, Ethiopia purchased modern weapons and trained
its army to use them. Thus prepared,
the Ethiopians defeated an Italian invasion at Adowa in 1896. These Ethiopian
army officers wore their most elaborate
finery to pose for a photograph after
their victory.
AP* Exam Tip Be able
to discuss examples of successful rejection of imperialism, such as Ethiopia.
Ethiopian Success
Menelik Emperor of
Ethiopia (r. 1889–1911). He
enlarged Ethiopia to its present dimensions and defeated
an Italian invasion at Adowa
(1896).
African Land and Labor
finally overwhelmed. In the Niger Delta, the ancient city of Benin, rich with artistic treasures,
resisted colonial control until 1897, when a British “punitive expedition” set it on fire and carted
its works of art off to Europe.
One resistance movement succeeded, to the astonishment of Europeans and Africans alike.
When Menelik became emperor of Ethiopia in 1889 (see Chapter 25), his country was threatened
by Sudanese Muslims to the west and by France and Italy, which controlled the coast of the Red
Sea to the east. For many years, Ethiopia had been purchasing European and American weapons. When Italians attempted to establish a protectorate over Ethiopia, they found the Ethiopians armed with thousands of rifles and even machine guns and artillery pieces. Although Italy
sent twenty thousand troops to attack Ethiopia, in 1896 they were defeated at Adowa (AH-doah) by a larger and better-trained Ethiopian army.
Most Africans neither joined nor fought the European invaders but tried to continue living as
before. They found this increasingly difficult because colonial rule disrupted every traditional
society. The presence of colonial officials meant that rights to land, commercial transactions,
and legal disputes were handled very differently and that traditional rulers lost all authority,
except where Europeans used them as local administrators.
Changes in landholding were especially disruptive, for most Africans were farmers or herders for whom access to land was a necessity. In areas with a high population density, such as
Egypt and West Africa, colonial rulers left peasants in place, encouraged them to grow cash
crops, and collected taxes on the harvest. Elsewhere, the new rulers declared any land that was
not farmed to be “vacant” and gave it to private concession companies or to European planters and ranchers. In Kenya, Northern Rhodesia, and South Africa, Europeans found the land
and climate to their liking. White settlers forced Africans to become squatters, sharecroppers, or
ranch hands on land they had farmed for generations. In South Africa they forced many Africans
off their lands and onto “reserves.”
Although the colonial rulers harbored designs on the land, they were even more interested
in African labor. They did not want to pay wages high enough to attract workers voluntarily.
Instead, they imposed various taxes, such as the hut tax and the head tax, which Africans had
to pay regardless of their income. To find the money, Africans had little choice but to accept
whatever work the Europeans offered. In this way Africans were recruited to work on plantations, railroads, and other modern enterprises. In the South African mines Africans were paid,
on average, one-tenth as much as Europeans.
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DIVERSITY + DOMINANCE
Two Africans Recall the Arrival of the Europeans
We know a great deal about the arrival of the Europeans into the
interior of Africa from the perspective of the conquerors, but very
little about how the events were experienced by Africans. Here
are two accounts by African women, one from northern Nigeria whose land was occupied by the British, the other from the
Congo Free State, a colony of King Leopold II of Belgium. They
show not only how Africans experienced European colonial
dominance but also how diverse these African experiences were.
Baba of Karo, a Nigerian Woman,
Remembers Her Childhood
When I was a maiden the Europeans first arrived. Ever since
we were quite small the malams had been saying that the
Europeans would come with a thing called a train, they would
come with a thing called a motor-car, in them you would go
and come back in a trice. They would stop wars, they would
repair the world, they would stop oppression and lawlessness,
we should live at peace with them. We used to go and sit quietly and listen to the prophecies.
I remember when a European came to Karo on a horse, and
some of his foot soldiers went into the town. Everyone came
out to look at them, but in Zerewa they didn’t see the European. Everyone at Karo ran away—“There’s a European, there’s
a European!”
At that time Yusufu was the king of Karo. He did not like
the Europeans, he did not wish them, he would not sign their
treaty. Then he say that perforce he would have to agree, so he
did. We Habe wanted them to come, it was the Fulani who did
not like it. When the Europeans came the Habe saw that if you
worked for them they paid you for it, they didn’t say, like the
Fulani, “Commoner, give me this! Commoner, bring me that!”
Yes, the Habe wanted them; they saw no harm in them.
The Europeans said that there were to be no more slaves;
if someone said “Slave!” you could complain to the alkali who
African Women
would punish the master who said it, the judge said, “That is
what the Europeans have decreed.” The first order said that any
slave, if he was younger than you, was your younger brother, if
he was older than you was your elder brother—they were all
brothers of their master’s family. No one used the word “slave”
any more. When slavery was stopped, nothing much happened
at our rinji except that some slaves whom we had bought in the
market ran away. Our own father went to his farm and worked,
he and his son took up their large hoes; they loaned out their
spare farms. Tsoho our father and Kadiri my brother with
whom I live now and Babambo worked, they farmed guineacorn and millet and groundnuts and everything; before this
they had supervised the slaves’ work—now they did their own.
In the old days if the chief liked the look of your daughter he
would take her and put her in his house; you could do nothing
about it. Now they don’t do that.
Ilanga, a Congolese Woman,
Recounts Her Capture by Agents
of the Congo Free State
. . . we were all busy in the fields hoeing our plantations, for it
was the rainy season, and the weeds sprang quickly up, when a
runner came to the village saying that a large band of men was
coming, that they all wore red caps and blue cloth, and carried guns and long knives, and that many white men were with
them, the chief of whom was Kibalanga (Michaux). Niendo at
once called all the chief men to his house, while the drums
were beaten to summon the people to the village. A long consultation was held, and finally we were all told to go quietly to
the fields and bring in ground-nuts, plantains, and cassava
for the warriors who were coming, and goats and fowl for the
white men. The women all went with baskets and filled them,
and put them in the road, which was blocked up, so many were
there. Niendo then commanded everyone to go and sit quietly
Some Africans came to the cities and mining camps seeking a better life than they had on
the land. Many migrated great distances and stayed away for years at a time. Most migrant workers were men who left their wives and children behind in villages and on reserves. In some cases
the authorities did not allow them to bring their families and settle permanently in the towns.
This caused great hardship for African women, who had to grow food for their families during
the men’s absences and care for sick and aged workers. Long separations between spouses also
led to an increase in prostitution and to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
Some African women welcomed colonial rule, for it brought an end to fighting and slave
raiding, but others were led into captivity (see Diversity and Dominance: Two Africans Recall the
Arrival of the Europeans). A few succeeded in becoming wealthy traders or owners of livestock.
On the whole, however, African women benefited less than men from the economic changes
that colonialism introduced. In areas where the colonial rulers replaced communal property
with private property, property rights were assigned to the head of the household—that is, to the
man. Almost all the jobs open to Africans, even those considered “women’s work” in Europe,
such as nursing and domestic service, were reserved for men.
782
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in the houses until he gave other orders. This we did, everyone
remaining quietly seated while Niendo went up the road with
the head men to meet the white chief. We did not know what
to think, for most of us feared that so many armed men coming boded evil; but Niendo thought that, by giving presents of
much food, he would induce the strangers to pass on without
harming us. And so it proved, for the soldiers took the baskets,
and were then ordered by the white men to move off through
the village. Many of the soldiers looked into the houses and
shouted at us words we did not understand. We were glad when
they were all gone, for we were much in fear of the white men
and the strange warriors, who are known to all the people as
being great fighters, bringing war wherever they go. . . .
When the white men and their warriors had gone, we went
again to our work, and were hoping that they would not return;
but this they did in a very short time. As before, we brought in
great heaps of food; but this time Kibalanga did not move away
directly, but camped near our village, and his soldiers came
and stole all our fowl and goats and tore up our cassava; but we
did not mind as long as they did not harm us. The next morning it was reported that the white men were going away; but
soon after the sun rose over the hill, a large band of soldiers
came into the village, and we all went into the houses and sat
down. We were not long seated when the soldiers came rushing in shouting, and threatening Niendo with their guns. They
rushed into the houses and dragged the people out. Three or
four came to our house and caught hold of me, also my husband Oleka and my sister Katinga. We were dragged into the
road, and were tied together with cords about our necks, so
that we could not escape. We were all crying, for now we knew
that we were to be taken away to be slaves. The soldiers beat
us with the iron sticks from their guns, and compelled us to
march to the camp of Kibalanga, who ordered the women to be
tied up separately, ten to each cord, and the men in the same
way. When we were all collected—and there were many from
other villages whom we now saw, and many from Waniendo—
the soldiers brought baskets of food for us to carry, in some of
which was smoked human flesh (niama na nitu).
We then set off marching very quickly. My sister Katinga had
her baby in her arms, and was not compelled to carry a basket;
but my husband Oleka was made to carry a goat. We marched
until the afternoon, when we camped near a stream, where we
were glad to drink, for we were much athirst. We had nothing
to eat, for the soldiers would give us nothing, so we lay upon
the ground, and at night went to sleep. The next day we continued the march, and when we camped at noon were given some
maize and plantains, which were gathered near a village from
which the people had run away. So it continued each day until
the fifth day, when the soldiers took my sister’s baby and threw
it in the grass, leaving it to die, and made her carry some cooking pots which they found in the deserted village. On the sixth
day we became very weak from lack of food and from constant marching and sleeping in the damp grass, and my husband, who marched behind us with the goat, could not stand
up longer, and so he sat down beside the path and refused to
walk more. The soldiers beat him, but still he refused to move.
Then one of them struck him on the head with the end of his
gun, and he fell upon the ground. One of the soldiers caught
the goat, while two or three others stuck the long knives they
put on the ends of their guns into my husband. I saw the blood
spurt out, and then saw him no more, for we passed over the
brow of a hill and he was out of sight. Many of the young men
were killed the same way, and many babies thrown into the
grass to die. A few escaped; but we were so well guarded that it
was almost impossible.
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
1. How do Baba and Ilanga recall their existence before the
Europeans came?
2. What did they expect when they first heard of the arrival
of Europeans? Instead, what happened to them, their relatives, and their towns?
3. How do you explain the difference between these two
accounts?
Source: From M. F. Smith, ed., Baba of Karo: A Woman of the Muslim Hausa
(New York: Philosophical Library, 1955), 66–68. Edgar Canisius, A Campaign
Amongst Cannibals (London: R. A. Everett & Co., 1903), 250–256. Used by permission of the Philosophical Library.
Cultural Responses
Mission Schools
Africans had more contact with missionaries than with any other Europeans. Missionaries, both
men and women, opened schools to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic to village children.
Boys were taught crafts such as carpentry and blacksmithing, while girls learned domestic skills
such as cooking, laundry, and childcare.
Along with basic skills, the first generation of Africans educated in mission schools acquired
Western ideas of justice and progress. Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a Yoruba rescued from slavery as
a boy and educated in mission schools in Sierra Leone, went on to become an Anglican minister
and, in 1864, the first African bishop. Crowther thought that Africa needed European assistance
in achieving both spiritual and economic development:
Africa has neither knowledge nor skill . . . to bring out her vast resources for her own improvement. . . . Therefore to claim Africa for the Africans alone, is to claim for her the right of a
continued ignorance. . . . For it is certain, unless help [comes] from without, a nation can
never rise above its present state.5
783
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784
CHAPTER 27 The New Imperialim, 1869–1914
After the first generation, many of the teachers in mission schools were African, themselves
the products of a mission education. They discovered that Christian ideals clashed with the
reality of colonial exploitation. One convert wrote in 1911:
There is too much failure among all Europeans in Nyasaland. The three combined bodies—
Missionaries, Government and Companies or gainers of money—do form the same rule to
look upon the native with mockery eyes. . . . If we had enough power to communicate ourselves to Europe, we would advise them not to call themselves Christendom, but Europeandom. Therefore the life of the three combined bodies is altogether too cheaty, too thefty, too
mockery. Instead of “Give,” they say “Take away from.” There is too much breakage of God’s
pure law.6
Christian missionaries from Europe and America were not the only ones to bring religious
change to Africa. In southern and Central Africa indigenous preachers adapted Christianity
to African values and customs and
SECTION REVIEW
founded new denominations known
as “Ethiopian” churches.
● In the late nineteenth century, the European powers divided Africa among
Christianity proved successful
themselves.
in converting followers of traditional
religions but made no inroads among
● Britain took over Egypt when it could not repay its debts.
Muslims. Instead, Islam, long pre● King Leopold II of Belgium initiated the partition of Africa by claiming the
dominant in northern and eastern
Congo.
Africa, spread southward as Muslim
teachers established Quranic schools
● The discovery of gold and diamonds in southern Africa triggered clashes
in the villages and founded Muslim
between British and Afrikaners, with the British emerging victorious.
brotherhoods. European colonialism
● African reactions to the invasion varied widely; some collaborated, others
unwittingly helped the diffusion of
resisted, but few benefited.
Islam. By building cities and increasing trade, colonial rule permitted Mus● Only Ethiopia, because it had adequate firearms, was able to defend its
lims to settle in new areas. As Islam—
independence.
a universal religion without the taint
● Many African men lost their lands and migrated to cities and mines, leaving
of colonialism—became increasingly
families behind.
relevant to Africans, the number of
Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa prob● Many Africans turned to Christianity or Islam.
ably doubled between 1869 and 1914.
IMPERIALISM IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
Europeans had traded along the coasts of Asia and the East Indies since the early sixteenth century. By 1869 Britain already controlled most of India and Burma; Spain occupied the Philippines; and the Netherlands held large parts of the East Indies (now Indonesia). Between 1862
and 1895 France conquered Indochina (now Vietnam, Kampuchea, and Laos). Let us look at the
impact of the New Imperialism on Central and Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and
Hawaii (see Map 27.2).
Central Asia
Russian Imperialism
For over seven centuries Russians had been at the mercy of the nomads of the Eurasian steppe
extending from the Black Sea to Manchuria. When the nomadic tribesmen were united, as they
were under the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan (r. 1206–1227), they could defeat the Russians; when
they were not, the Russians moved into the steppe. This age-old ebb and flow ended when Russia acquired modern rifles and artillery.
Between 1865 and 1876 Russian forces advanced into Central Asia. The Kazakhs, who lived
east of the Caspian Sea, fought bravely but in vain. The fertile agricultural land of Kazakhstan
attracted 200,000 Russian settlers. Although the governments of Tsars Alexander II (r. 1855–1881)
and Alexander III (r. 1881–1894) claimed not to interfere in indigenous customs, they declared
communally owned grazing lands “vacant” and turned them over to farmers from Russia. By
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Imperialism in Asia and the Pacific
785
the end of the nineteenth century the nomads were reduced to starvation. Echoing the beliefs of
other European imperialists, an eminent Russian jurist declared: “International rights cannot
be taken into account when dealing with semibarbarous peoples.”
South of the Kazakh steppe land were deserts dotted with oases where the fabled cities of
Tashkent, Bukhara, and Samarkand served the caravan trade between China and the Middle
East. By the 1860s and 1870s it was fairly easy for Russian expeditions to conquer the indigenous
peoples in these areas. Russia thereby acquired land suitable for cotton, along with a large and
growing Muslim population. The Russians abolished slavery, built railroads to link the region
with Europe, and planted hundreds of thousands of acres of cotton. Unlike the British in India,
however, they did not attempt to change the customs, languages, or religious beliefs of their
subjects.
Southeast Asia and Indonesia
Mary Evans Picture Library/The Image Works
Tropical Agriculture
The peoples of the Southeast Asian peninsula and the Indonesian archipelago had been in
contact with outsiders—Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Europeans—for centuries. Java and the
Spice Islands had long been subject to Portuguese and later Dutch domination. Until the midnineteenth century, however, most of the region was made up of independent kingdoms.
As in Africa, there is considerable variation in the history of different parts of the region, yet
all came under intense imperialist pressure during the nineteenth century. Burma (now Myanmar), nearest India, was gradually taken over by the British in the course of the century, until
the last piece was annexed in 1885. Indochina fell under French control piece by piece until it
was finally subdued in 1895. Similarly, Malaya (now Malaysia) came under British rule in stages
during the 1870s and 1880s. By the early 1900s the Dutch had subdued northern Sumatra. Only
Siam (now Thailand) remained independent, although it lost several border provinces.
Despite their varied political histories, all these regions had features in common. They all
had fertile soil, constant warmth, and heavy rains. Furthermore, the peoples of the region had a
long tradition of intensive gardening, irrigation, and terracing. In parts of the region where the
population was not very dense, Europeans found it easy to import landless laborers from China
and India. Another reason for the region’s wealth was the transfer of commercially valuable
plants from other parts of the world. Tobacco, cinchona
(sin-CHO-nah) (an antimalarial drug), manioc (an edible
root crop), maize (corn), and natural rubber were brought
from the Americas; sugar from India; tea from China; and
coffee and oil palms from Africa. By 1914 much of the
world’s supply of these valuable products—in the case of
rubber, almost all—came from Southeast Asia and Indonesia (see Environment and Technology: Imperialism and
Tropical Ecology).
Most of the wealth of Southeast Asia and Indonesia
was exported to Europe and North America. In exchange,
the inhabitants of the region received two benefits from
colonial rule: peace and a reliable food supply. As a result,
their numbers increased at an unprecedented rate. For
A Rubber Plantation As bicycles and automobiles proliferated in the early twentieth century, the demand for rubber
outstripped the supply available from wild rubber trees
in the Amazon forest. Rubber grown on plantations in
Southeast Asia came on the market from 1910 on. The rubber trees had to be tapped very carefully and on a regular
schedule to obtain the latex or sap from which rubber was
extracted. In this picture a woman and a boy perform this
operation on a plantation in British Malaya.
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OTTOMA
d
Re
Ni l
eR
.
an
Independent Asian states
Ottoman Empire
France
Netherlands
(1907)
A
N
(1891)
OMAN
Arabian
Sea
Karachi
AN
(1846)
(Port.)
Goa
H
IM
PA
AY
O C E A N
Ceylon
Pondicherry (Fr.)
Karikal (Fr.)
Hu
a
Ya
n
R.
Sumatra
(Gr. Br. 1819)
Singapore
(1874, 1909)
Saigon
Java
DU
TCH
(1619)
Manila
(U.S. 1898)
Philippine Is.
(Neth.)
Timor
(Portugal 1859)
INDIES
Celebes
EAST
(1888)
Borneo
SARAWAK
Batavia
N
E
40°N
60°N
Equator 0°
OCEAN
PACIFIC
20°N
Tropic of Cancer
A
New Guinea
P
JA
(1905)
Karafuto
Sakhalin
Sea of
Ok h o t s k
Interactive Map
East
China Ryuku Is. (Jap.)
Sea
(Gr. Br. 1842)
(Ger. 1898)
(Japan 1905)
Weihai (Gr. Br. 1898)
Jiaozhou
BRITISH NORTH
BORNEO
South
China
Sea
(1888)
(1859, 1907)
FRENCH
INDOCHINA
Hainan
Haiphong
MALAY STATES
Bangkok
SIAM
Hanoi
(1860)
Vladivostok
(1905, 1910)
Xiamen
Formosa (1895)
Guangzhou (Gr. Br. 1842)
Hong Kong (Gr. Br. 1842)
Zhanjiang (France 1898)
Macao
(Port. 1557)
Kunming
Wuhan
Fuzhou
KOREA
(1858)
Khabarovsk
120°E
Sea of
Japan
Lüshun (Port Arthur) (East Sea)
OL
Harbin
(1858)
AMUR DISTRICT
M A NC HUR IA
Nanjing
Shanghai
Tianjin
H
JE
(Mukden)
GO
LIA
Amur
SIBERIA
110°E
N
MO Shenyang
Beijing
IN
R
NE
Chita
Lake
Baikal
Chongqing
i
gz
C H I N A
© Cengage Learning
(Gr. Br.)
Andaman Is.
B ay
Yanaon of
Rangoon
(Fr.)
Bengal
(1852, 1885)
B U R MA
Calcutta
A M BHUTAN
TS.
L
TIBET
SINKIANG
(Russian Influence, 1912)
Irkutsk
100°E
OUTER MONGOLIA
E M P I R E
g
G a n es R .
NE
AL
Madras
INDIA
Delhi
PUNJAB
KASHMIR
I N D I A N
Bombay
(Port.)
Diu
T
IS
Samarkand
Andizhan (1871)
Lake
Balkash
80°E
MAP 27.2 Asia in 1914 By 1914, much of Asia was claimed by colonial powers. The southern rim, from the Persian Gulf to
the Pacific, was occupied by Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the United States. Central Asia had been incorporated
into the Russian Empire. Japan, now industrialized, had joined the Western imperialist powers in expanding its territory and
influence at the expense of China.
Russian Empire
Major railroads
Japan and its territories
United States
lf
Kushka
(1884)
Merv
(1864)
Omsk
Tashkent
(1868)
Kazalinsk
n Railway
R U S S I A N
BRITISH
SPHERE BALUCHISTAN
(1883)
HADRAMAUT (1888)
Gu
IR AN
(1907)
WEST ADEN
(1903)
ARABIA
(1899)
KUWAIT
Baghdad
(1881)
Aral
Sea
RUSSIAN SPHERE
Tehran
eria
Orenburg
ib
rans-S
60°E
Bukhara
Krasnovodsk
Ashkhabad
T
Great Britain
Territories held by
Western powers
IR
Medina
1,000 Mi.
Sea
A F R I C A
P
Baku
i
500
1,000 Km.
EM
Damascus
N
(1878)
Kars
rs
0
500
(1878)
Samara
Pe
0
R.
Constantinople
Angora
er
ck Sea
Batum
Bla
ep
Moscow
E
N
.
ni
Kiev
r r a n e a nBeirut
Sea
Medite
Danube R
Warsaw
BrestLitovsk
Riga
R.
Vol
ga
40°E
E
St. Petersburg
RE
Helsinki
GH
AF
.
Sea
In dus R
R.
He
ng
n
S
D
pia
PI
s
Ca
EM
R.
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ENVIRONMENT + TECHNOLOGY
Like all conquerors before them, the European imperialists of
the nineteenth century exacted taxes and rents from the peoples they conquered. But they also sent botanists and agricultural experts to their tropical colonies to increase the production of commercial crops, radically changing the landscapes.
The most dramatic effects were brought about by the
deliberate introduction of new crops. In the early nineteenth
century tea was transferred from China to India and Ceylon.
In the 1850s British and Dutch botanists smuggled seeds of
the cinchona tree from the Andes to India and Java. With the
seeds, the Europeans established cinchona plantations to produce quinine, used as an antimalarial drug and a flavoring
for tonic water. In the 1870s British agents stole seeds of rubber trees from the Amazon rain forest and transferred them to
Malaya and Sumatra.
Before these transfers, vast forests covered the highlands
of India, Southeast Asia, and Indonesia, the lands where the
new plants grew best. So European planters had the forests cut
down and replaced with thousands of acres of commercially
profitable trees and bushes, all lined up in perfect rows and
tended by indigenous laborers to satisfy the demands of customers in faraway lands. The crops that poured forth from the
transformed environments brought great wealth to the European planters and the imperial powers. In 1909 the British botanist John Willis justified the transformation in these terms:
Whether planting in the tropics will always continue to
be under European management is another question,
but the northern powers will not permit that the rich
and as yet comparatively undeveloped countries of
the tropics should be entirely wasted by being devoted
merely to the supply of the food and clothing wants of
their own people, when they can also supply the wants
of the colder zones in so many indispensable products.
This quotation raises important questions about trade versus self-sufficiency. If a region’s economy supplies the food
and clothing wants of its own people, is its output “entirely
wasted”? What is the advantage of trading the products of one
region (such as the tropics) for those of another (such as the
colder zones)? Is this trade an obligation? Should one part of
the world (such as the “northern powers”) let another refuse to
Social Changes
From Bentley & Trimen’s Medicinal Plants. Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University
Imperialism and Tropical Ecology
Branch of a Cinchona Tree The bark of the cinchona tree
was the source of quinine, the only antimalarial drug known
before the 1940s. Quinine made it much safer for Europeans
to live in the tropics.
develop and sell its “indispensable products”? Can you think of
a case where a powerful country forced a weaker one to trade?
Source: The quotation is from John Christopher Willis, Agriculture in the Tropics: An Elementary Treatise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909),
38–39.
instance, the population of Java (an island the size of Pennsylvania) doubled from 16 million in
1870 to over 30 million in 1914.
Colonialism and the growth of population brought many social changes. Agricultural and
commercial peoples gradually moved into mountainous and forested areas, displacing the earlier inhabitants who practiced hunting and gathering or shifting agriculture. The migrations of
the Javanese to Borneo and Sumatra are but one example. Immigrants from China and India
(see Chapter 25) changed the ethnic composition and culture of every country in the region.
Thus the population of the Malay Peninsula became part Malay, part Chinese, and part Indian.
787
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788
CHAPTER 27 The New Imperialim, 1869–1914
Nationalism
As in Africa, European missionaries attempted to spread Christianity under the colonial
umbrella. Islam, however, was much more successful in gaining new converts, for it had been
established in the region for centuries and people did not consider it a religion imposed on them
by foreigners.
Education and European ideas had an impact on the political perceptions of the peoples of
Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Just as important was their awareness of events in neighboring
Asian countries: India, where a nationalist movement arose in the 1880s; China, where modernizers were undermining the authority of the Qing; and especially Japan, whose rapid industrialization culminated in its brilliant victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905; see
Chapter 26). The spirit of a rising generation was expressed by a young Vietnamese writing soon
after the Russo-Japanese War:
I, . . . an obscure student, having had occasion to study new books and new doctrines, have
discovered in a recent history of Japan how they have been able to conquer the impotent
Europeans. This is the reason why we have formed an organization. . . . We have selected
from young Annamites [Vietnamese] the most energetic, with great capacities for courage,
and are sending them to Japan for study. . . . Several years have passed without the French
being aware of the movement. . . . Our only aim is to prepare the population for the future.7
Hawaii and the Philippines, 1878–1902
By the 1890s the United States had a fast-growing population and industries that produced more
manufactured goods than they could sell at home. Merchants and bankers began to look for
export markets. The political mood was also expansionist, and many echoed the feelings of the
naval strategist Alfred T. Mahan (mah-HAHN): “Whether they will or no, Americans must now
begin to look outward. The growing production of the country requires it.”
Annexation of Hawaii
Some Americans had been looking outward for quite some time, especially across the Pacific
to China and Japan. In 1878 the United States obtained the harbor of Pago Pago in Samoa as a
coaling and naval station, and in 1887 it secured the use of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii for the same
purpose. By 1898 the United States under President William McKinley (1897–1901) had become
openly imperialistic and annexed Hawaii as a steppingstone to Asia. As the United States became
ever more involved in Asian affairs, Hawaii’s strategic location brought an inflow of U.S. military
personnel, and its fertile land caused planters to import laborers from Japan, China, and the
Philippines. These immigrants soon outnumbered the native Hawaiians.
The United States
While large parts of Asia were falling under colonial domination, the people of the PhilipConquers the Philippines pines were chafing under their Spanish rulers. Emilio Aguinaldo, leader of a secret society, rose
in revolt and proclaimed a republic in 1899. The revolutionaries had a good chance of winning
Emilio Aguinaldo Leader of
independence, for Spain had its hands full with a revolution in Cuba. Unfortunately for Aguithe Filipino independence
naldo and his followers, the United States declared war against Spain in April 1898 and quickly
movement against Spain
overcame Spanish forces in the Philippines and Cuba. After the Spanish defeat, President
(1895–1898). He proclaimed
McKinley realized that a weakened Spain might lose the islands to another imperialist power.
the independence of the
Japan, having recently defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and annexed TaiPhilippines in 1899, but his
wan (see Chapter 26), was eager to expand its empire. So was Germany, which had taken over
movement was crushed
parts of New Guinea and Samoa and several Pacific archipelagoes during the 1880s. To forestall
and he was captured by the
them, McKinley purchased the Philippines from Spain for $20 million.
United States Army in 1901.
The Filipinos were not eager to trade one master for another. For a while, Aguinaldo cooperated with the Americans in the hope of achieving
full independence. When his plan was rejected, he
SECTION REVIEW
rose up again in 1899 and proclaimed the independence of his country. In spite of protests by anti● Once it had modern firearms, Russia easily conquered and
imperialists in the United States, the U.S. governsettled the countries of Central Asia.
ment decided that its global interests outweighed
● Britain, France, and the Netherlands turned their colonies in
the interests of the Filipino people. In rebel areas, a
Southeast Asia and Indonesia into producers of tropical crops.
U.S. army of occupation tortured prisoners, burned
villages and crops, and forced the inhabitants into
● The United States took over Hawaii in 1898; after four years of
“reconcentration camps.” By the end of the insurwar, it secured the Philippines from Spain and crushed a Filirection in 1902, the war had cost the lives of 5,000
pino rebellion.
Americans and 200,000 Filipinos.
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789
Corbis
Imperialism in Latin America
Emilio Aguinaldo In 1896, a revolt led by Emilio Aguinaldo attempted to expel Spaniards from the Philippines. When the
United States purchased the Philippines from Spain two years later, the Filipino people were not consulted. Aguinaldo continued his campaign, this time against the American occupation forces, until his capture in 1901. In this picture, he appears on
horseback, surrounded by some of his troops.
After the insurrection ended, the United States attempted to soften its rule with public works
and economic development projects. New buildings went up in the city of Manila; roads, harbors, and railroads were built; and the Philippine economy was tied ever more closely to that of
the United States. In 1907 Filipinos were allowed to elect representatives to a legislative assembly, but ultimate authority remained in the hands of a governor appointed by the president of the
United States. In 1916 the Philippines were the first U.S. colony to be promised independence, a
promise fulfilled thirty years later.
IMPERIALISM IN LATIN AMERICA
free-trade imperialism
Economic dominance of a
weaker country by a more
powerful one, while maintaining the legal independence of the weaker state.
In the late nineteenth century, free-trade imperialism
characterized the relations
between the Latin American
republics, on the one hand,
and Great Britain and the
United States, on the other.
Nations in the Americas followed two divergent paths (see Chapter 23). In Canada and the United
States manufacturing industries, powerful corporations, and wealthy financial institutions
arose. Latin America and the Caribbean exported raw materials and foodstuffs and imported
manufactured goods. The poverty of their people, the preferences of their elites, and the pressures of the world economy made them increasingly dependent on the industrialized countries.
Their political systems saved them from outright annexation, but their natural resources made
them attractive targets for manipulation by the industrial powers, including the United States,
in a form of economic dependence called free-trade imperialism. In the larger republics of South
America, the pressure was mostly financial and economic. In Central America and the Caribbean, it also included military intervention by the United States.
Railroads and the Imperialism of Free Trade
Latin America’s economic potential was huge, for the region could produce many agricultural
and mineral products in demand in the industrial countries. What was needed was a means of
opening the interior to development. Railroads seemed the perfect answer.
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790
CHAPTER 27 The New Imperialim, 1869–1914
Foreign merchants and bankers and Latin American landowners and politicians embraced
the new technology. Starting in the 1870s, almost every country in Latin America acquired railroads, usually connecting mines or agricultural regions with the nearest port rather than linking up the different parts of the interior. All the equipment and building material came from
Britain or the United States. So did the money to build the networks, the engineers who designed
and maintained them, and the managers who ran them.
Argentina, a land of rich soil that produced wheat, beef, and hides, gained the longest and
best-developed rail network south of the United States. By 1914, 86 percent of the railroads in
Argentina were owned by British firms; 40 percent of the employees were British; and the official
language of the railroads was not Spanish but English. The same was true of mining and industrial enterprises and public utilities throughout Latin America.
In many ways, the situation resembled those of India and Ireland, which also obtained rail
networks in exchange for raw materials and agricultural products. The Argentine nationalist
Juan Justo saw the parallel:
English capital has done what English armies could not do. Today our country is tributary
to England . . . the gold that the English capitalists take out of Argentina or carry off in the
form of products does us no more good than the Irish get from the revenues that the English
lords take out of Ireland.8
The difference was that the Indians and Irish had little say in the matter because they were
under British rule. But in Latin America the political elites encouraged foreign companies
with generous concessions as the most rapid way to modernize their countries and enrich the
property owners. The majority were neither consulted nor allowed to benefit from the railroad
boom.
American Expansionism and the Spanish-American War, 1898
The United States had long had interests in Cuba, the closest and richest of the Caribbean islands
and a Spanish colony. American businesses had invested great sums of money in Cuba’s sugar
and tobacco industries, and thousands of Cubans had migrated to the United States. In 1895 the
Cuban nationalist José Martí started a revolution against Spanish rule. American newspapers
thrilled readers with lurid stories of Spanish atrocities; businessmen worried about their investments; and politicians demanded that the U.S. government help liberate Cuba.
On February 15, 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine accidentally blew up in Havana harbor, killing 266 American sailors. The U.S. government immediately blamed Spain and issued an ultimatum that the Spanish evacuate Cuba. Spain agreed to the ultimatum, but the American press
and Congress were eager for war, and President McKinley did not restrain them.
The Spanish-American War was over quickly. On May 1, 1898, U.S. warships destroyed the
Spanish fleet at Manila in the Philippines. Two months later the United States Navy sank the
Spanish Atlantic fleet off Santiago, Cuba. By mid-August Spain was suing for peace. U.S. Secretary of State John Hay called it “a splendid little war.” The United States purchased the Philippines from Spain but took over Puerto Rico and Guam as war booty. The two islands remain
American possessions to this day. Cuba became an independent republic, subject to interference by the United States.
American Intervention in the Caribbean
and Central America, 1901–1914
The nations of the Caribbean and Central America were small and poor, and their governments were corrupt, unstable, and often bankrupt. They seemed to offer an open invitation to
foreign interference. A government would borrow money to pay for railroads, harbors, electric
power, and other symbols of modernity. When it could not repay the loan, the lending banks
in Europe or the United States would ask for assistance from their home governments, which
sometimes threatened to intervene. To ward off European intervention, the United States sent in
the marines on more than one occasion.
Presidents Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909), William Taft (1909–1913), and Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921) felt impelled to intervene in the region, though they differed sharply on the
proper policy the United States should follow toward the small nations to the south. Roosevelt
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Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
The World Economy and the Global Environment
791
Panama Canal Ship canal
cut across the isthmus of
Panama by United States
Army engineers; it opened
in 1915. The canal greatly
shortened the sea voyage
between the east and west
coasts of North America.
The United States turned
the canal over to Panama on
January 1, 2000.
encouraged regimes friendly to the United States; Taft sought to influence them through loans
from American banks; and the moralist Wilson tried to impose clean governments by military
means.
Having “liberated” Cuba from Spain, in 1901 the United States forced the Cuban government to accept the Platt Amendment, which gave the United States the “right to intervene” to
maintain order on the island. The United States used this excuse to occupy Cuba militarily from
1906 to 1909, in 1912, and again from 1917 to 1922. In all but name Cuba became an American
protectorate. U.S. troops also occupied the Dominican Republic from 1904 to 1907 and again in
1916, Nicaragua and Honduras in 1912, and Haiti in 1915. They brought sanitation and material
progress but no political improvements.
The United States was especially forceful in Panama, which was a province of Colombia.
Here the issue was not corruption or debts but
a more vital interest. When the United States
SECTION REVIEW
acquired Hawaii and the Philippines, it recognized
the need for a canal that would allow warships to
● Britain and the United States collaborated with Latin American
move quickly between the Atlantic and Pacific
elites to exploit the Latin American republics economically; a
Oceans. The main obstacle was Colombia, which
key factor was the expansion of railroads.
refused to give the United States a piece of its ter● After defeating Spain in 1898, the United States sent troops
ritory. In 1903 the U.S. government supported
to Cuba and other Caribbean and Central American republics;
a Panamanian rebellion against Colombia and
through the Platt Amendment, it also claimed the right to interquickly recognized the independence of Panama.
fere in Cuban affairs.
In exchange, it obtained the right to build a canal
and to occupy a zone 5 miles (8 kilometers) wide
● The United States helped Panama secede from Colombia so
on either side of it. Work began in 1904, and the
that it could build the Panama Canal.
Panama Canal opened on August 15, 1914.
THE WORLD ECONOMY AND THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
The New Imperialists were not traditional conquerors or empire builders like the Spanish conquistadors. Although their conquests were much larger (see Map 27.3), their aim was not only to
extend their power over new territories and peoples but also to control both the natural world
and indigenous societies and put them to work more efficiently than had ever been done before.
They expressed their belief in progress and their good intentions in the clichés of the time: “the
conquest of nature,” “the annihilation of time and space,” “the taming of the wilderness,” and
“our civilizing mission.”
Expansion of the World Economy
AP* Exam Tip Patterns of world trade and the
impact of changes in world
trade are recurring topics
on the AP* exam.
The Transportation
Revolution
For centuries Europe had been a ready market for spices, sugar, silk, and other exotic or tropical
products. The Industrial Revolution vastly expanded this demand. Imports of foods and stimulants such as tea, coffee, and cocoa increased substantially during the nineteenth century. The
trade in industrial raw materials grew even faster. Some were the products of agriculture, such
as cotton, jute for bags, and palm oil for soap and lubricants. Others were minerals such as diamonds, gold, and copper. There also were wild forest products that only later came to be cultivated: timber for buildings and railroad ties, cinchona bark, rubber for rainwear and tires, and
gutta-percha (gut-tah-PER-cha) (the sap of a Southeast Asian tree) to insulate electric cables.
The growing needs of the industrial world could not be met by the traditional methods of
production and transportation of the nonindustrial world. When the U.S. Civil War interrupted
the export of cotton to England in the 1860s, the British turned to India and Egypt, but they found
that Indian cotton was ruined by exposure to rain and dust during the long trip from the interior of the country to the harbors. To prevent the expansion of their industry from being stifled
by the technological backwardness of their newly conquered territories, the imperialists made
every effort to bring those territories into the mainstream of the world market.
One great change was in transportation. The Suez and Panama Canals cut travel time
and lowered freight costs dramatically. Steamships became more numerous, and as their size
increased, new, deeper harbors were needed. The Europeans also built railroads throughout the
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60°N
Equator
30°S
60°S
BRITISH
GUIANA
60°W
DUTCH
GUIANA
FRENCH
GUIANA
AT L A N T I C
OCEAN
90°W
Bahamas
(Gr. Br.)
Puerto Rico
(U.S.)
BR. HONDURAS
Tropic of Capricorn
PAC I F IC
OCEAN
0°
C ANADA
UNITED STATES
Arctic Circle
120°W
RIO DE
ORO
N
SP. GUINEA
KAMERUN
NIGERIA
TOGO
GOLD
COAST
AT L A N T I C
OCEAN
LIBERIA
LI BYA
TUNISIA
ITALY
F R ENCH WEST AF R IC A
ALGER IA
SPAIN
AUSTRIAHUNGARY
30°E
NETH.
GERMANY
BELG.
0°
FRANCE
MOROCCO
IFNI
PORTUGAL
GREAT
BRITAIN
30°W
GAMBIA
PORT.
GUINEA
SIERRA LEONE
GREENLAND
(Denmark)
ANGOLA
NORTHERN
RHODESIA
BELGIAN
CONGO
UNION
UN
UNI
UNIO
U
N IO
NIO
ON OF
OF
SOUTH
SOU
SOUT
S
OUT
UTTH
U
AFRI
AFR
A
AF
AFRICA
FFR
RIICA
R
CA
Netherlands
Portugal
Italy
Spain
Germany
France
Great Britain
Belgium
150°E
Japan
Major shipping
M
rroute
United States
Russia
MALAY
STATES
DU
Philippine Is.
(U.S.)
JAPAN
0
Solomon
Is.
NEW
ZEALAND
New
Caledonia
(France)
New Hebrides
(Gr. Br. and France)
UA
2,000 Mi.
PA
P
Marshall
Is.
Caroline Is.
Mariana Is.
PAC I F IC
OCEAN
Interactive Map
© Cengage Learning
2,000 Km.
1,000
1,000
A U ST R A L IA
S
H EA
ST INDIE
East Timor
(Port.)
TC
SARAWAK
BR. NORTH BORNEO
0
FRENCH
INDOCHINA
Formosa
KOREA
KARAFUTO
Sakhalin
Hong Kong
(Gr. Br.)
Shanghai
(Gr. Br.)
Macao
(Port.)
SIAM
BURMA
BHUTAN
180°
MANCHURIA
Port Arthur
(Japan)
CHINA
MONGOLIA
CEYLON
INDIAN
OCEAN
INDIA
NEPAL
TIBET
120°E
The colonial powers and their possessions
LESOTHO
SOTH
SWA
S
SWAZILAND
WAZILAND
AZILAND
MOZAMBIQUE
UE
MADAGASCAR
NYASALAND
GERMAN
EAST AFRICA
SOUTHERN
RHODESIA
GERMAN
SOUTHWEST BECHUANALAND
AFRICA
AFR
RIICA
R
C
F
HADHRAMAUT
FRENCH
SOMALILAND
OMAN
TRUCIAL
OMAN
BRITISH
SOMALILAND
ITALIAN
BRITISH
SOMALILAND
EAST AFRICA
ETHIOPIA
UGANDA
ANGLOEGYPTIAN
SUDAN
RUSSIA
90°E
AFGHANISTAN
PERSIA
QATAR
NEJD
KUWAIT
ERITREA
EGY PT
CYPRUS
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
60°E
MAP 27.3 The Great Powers and Their Colonial Possessions in 1913 By 1913, a small handful of countries claimed sovereignty over more than half the land area of the earth. Global power was closely connected with industries and a merchant
marine, rather than with a large territory. This explains why Great Britain, the smallest of the great powers, possessed the largest empire.
Tropic of
Cancer
30°N
ALASKA
150°W
R.
IC A
AFR
AT.
EQ
U
The World Economy and the Global Environment
793
world; India alone had 37,000 miles (nearly 60,000 kilometers) of track by 1915, almost as much
as Germany or Russia. Railroads reached into the interior of Latin America, Canada, China, and
Australia. In 1903 the Russians completed the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Pacific. Visionaries even made plans for railroads from Europe to India and from
Egypt to South Africa.
Transformation of the Global Environment
Economic Botany
Gardiner F. Williams/NGS Image Collection
Irrigation
The economic changes brought by Europeans and Americans also altered environments around
the world. The British, whose craving for tea could not be satisfied with the limited exports available from China, introduced tea into Ceylon and northeastern India. In those areas and in Java,
thousands of square miles of tropical rain forests were felled to make way for tea plantations.
Economic botany and agricultural science were applied to every promising plant species.
European botanists had long collected and classified exotic plants from around the world. In the
nineteenth century they founded botanical gardens in Java, India, Mauritius (maw-REE-shuss),
Ceylon, Jamaica, and other tropical colonies. These gardens not only collected local plants but
also transferred commercially valuable plant species from one tropical region to another. Cinchona, tobacco, sugar, and other crops were introduced, improved, and vastly expanded in the
colonies of Southeast Asia and Indonesia (see Environment and Technology: Imperialism and
Tropical Ecology). Cocoa and coffee growing spread over large areas of Brazil and Africa; oilpalm plantations were established in Nigeria and the Congo Basin. After 1910, rubber, used to
make waterproof garments and bicycle tires, came from plantations in Southeast Asia.
Throughout the tropics, land once covered with forests or devoted to shifting slash-and-burn
agriculture was transformed into permanent farms and plantations. Even in areas not developed to export crops, growing populations put pressure on the land. In Java and India farmers
felled trees to obtain arable land and firewood. They terraced hillsides, drained swamps, and
dug wells.
Irrigation and water control transformed the dry parts of the tropics as well. British engineers in India built new irrigation canals, turning thousands of previously barren acres into
well-watered, densely populated farmland. The migration of European experts spread the newest techniques of irrigation engineering around the
world. By the turn of the century irrigation projects
were under way wherever rivers flowed through dry
lands. In Egypt and Central Asia irrigation brought
more acres under cultivation in one forty-year span
than in all previous history.
Railroads had voracious appetites for land and
resources. They cut into mountains, spanned rivers
and canyons, and covered as much land with their
freight yards as whole cities had needed in previous
centuries. They also consumed vast quantities of
iron, timber for ties, and coal or wood for fuel. Most
important of all, railroads brought people and their
cities, farms, and industries to areas previously occupied by small, scattered populations.
South African Diamond Mine When diamonds were
found in Kimberley, South Africa, in 1868, the discovery precipitated a rush of prospectors from Europe
and America. As soon as surface deposits were
exhausted, their claims were bought by large companies that could afford the heavy equipment needed to
mine deep underground. By the early twentieth century, diamonds came from major industrial mines like
the Premier Mine shown here.
Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
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794
CHAPTER 27 The New Imperialim, 1869–1914
SECTION REVIEW
●
The world economy, fueled by European ideas of “progress,”
expanded quickly between 1860 and 1914, thanks to cheaper
and faster transportation made possible with canals and
railroads.
●
Europeans made Latin America, Africa, and Asia into producers of raw materials and crops and into markets for industrial
goods.
●
Europeans studied botany and brought huge areas of land into
cultivation through irrigation.
●
Railroads transformed the land, and mining often polluted it.
Prospectors looking for valuable minerals
opened the earth to reveal its riches. Where mines
were dug deep inside the earth, the dirt and rocks
brought up with the ores formed huge mounds
near mine entrances. Open mines dug to obtain
ores lying close to the surface created a landscape
of lunar craters, and runoff from the minerals poisoned the water for miles around. Refineries that
processed the ores fouled the environment with
slag heaps and more toxic runoff.
The transformation of the land by human
beings, a constant throughout history, accelerated
sharply. Only the changes occurring since 1914
can compare with the transformation of the global
environment that took place between 1869 and
1914.
CONCLUSION
The imperial powers were driven by many motives. Governments used colonies to enhance their
prestige and power. Missionaries sought not only to convert native peoples but also to “civilize”
their behavior. Colonizers were led by the growing demand for natural resources. The imperialists used steamships, gunboats, and improved firearms to build their empires.
The “scramble” for Africa began in the 1870s. Britain secured the Suez Canal and constructed
a dam across the Nile. Elsewhere, European companies exploited rubber plantations, diamond
mines, and other resources. Local reaction to colonial rule varied greatly, as traditional land use
patterns were disrupted. All Africans were affected by changes in social and cultural customs.
The effects of colonialism varied throughout Asia, although in all regions the economic
changes benefited the Europeans rather than the indigenous peoples. Southeast Asia’s fertile
soil and heavy rains made various crops, especially rubber, very profitable. In Hawaii, Americans and foreign laborers eventually outnumbered the native Hawaiians. Europeans differed
in their approach to indigenous cultures and religions. Russians did not attempt to impose their
customs, language, or religious beliefs on Central Asians, whereas Christian missionaries in
Southeast Asia worked to spread their beliefs. Their efforts gained only limited success in lands
in which Islam or Hinduism had been dominant for centuries.
Latin America had great economic potential. The construction of railroads, using equipment and funding from Britain and the United States, helped to connect the interior regions
with the ports. Americans invested heavily in the sugar and tobacco industries of Cuba. The
United States also supported a Panamanian rebellion against Colombia in order to build the
Panama Canal.
Imperialism, both formal and informal, opened up the world to increased trade and communication. Shipping, canals, and railroads were the most visible means of globalization. Farming,
mining, labor migrations, and urbanization were profoundly affected as well. In the process,
natural environments were transformed as never before. Forests were replaced by plantations.
Irrigation schemes opened dry lands to agriculture. And railroads and mines cut into the landscape, leaving scars and pollution.
KEY TERMS
Suez Canal p. 771
New Imperialism p. 772
Battle of
Omdurman p. 774
colonialism p. 775
“scramble” for
Africa p. 776
Henry Morton
Stanley p. 778
King Leopold II p. 778
Savorgnan de
Brazza p. 778
Berlin Conference p. 778
Afrikaners p. 779
Cecil Rhodes p. 780
Asante p. 780
Menelik p. 781
Emilio Aguinaldo p. 788
free-trade
imperialism p. 789
Panama Canal p. 791
Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
Notes
795
EBOOK AND WEBSITE RESOURCES
Primary Source
Interactive Maps
Convention on Free Navigation of the Suez Canal Between
the European Powers and the Ottoman Empire, October 29,
1888
Map 27.1 Africa in 1878 and 1914
Map 27.2 Asia in 1914
Map 27.3 The Great Powers and Their Colonial Possessions
in 1913
Plus flashcards, practice quizzes, and more. Go to:
www.cengage.com/history/bullietearthpeople5e
SUGGESTED READING
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. 1958. A classic novel
describing the impact of colonialism in Nigerian society.
Cook, Scott B. Colonial Encounters in the Age of High Imperialism. 1996. A brief, well-written account of the New
Imperialism.
Headrick, Daniel R. The Tools of Empire: Technology and
European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century, 1981; and
The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of
Imperialism, 1850–1940. 1988. Two books emphasizing the
importance of technology in the conquests and the colonial era.
Healy, David. Drive to Hegemony: The United States in the
Caribbean, 1898–1917. 1989. The best summary of “dollar
diplomacy.”
Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed,
Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. 1998. A dramatic
account of the conquest and exploitation of the Belgian
Congo.
Hopkirk, Peter. The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in
Central Asia. 1994. Describes the rivalry between Russia
and Great Britain.
Huttenback, Robert. Racism and Empire: White Settlers and
Colored Immigrants in the British Self-Governing Colonies,
1830–1910. 1976. Analyzes racism and race relations in
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa.
Iriye, Akira. Across the Pacific: An Inner History of AmericanEast Asian Relations. 1992. Describes American policy
toward Japan and China.
Karnow, Stanley. In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines. 1989. How the United States conquered and rule
the Philippines.
MacKenzie, John. Imperialism and the Natural World. 1990.
The impact of economic development and agriculture on
colonial environments.
McCracken, Donal. Gardens of Empire: Botanical Institutions
of the Victorian British Empire. 1997. How British botanists
contributed to plant transfers and commercial agriculture
in the tropics.
Northrup, David. Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism,
1834–1922. 1995. How colonial enterprises imported workers from China and India to work in mines and plantations
in Southeast Asia, Oceania, the Caribbean, and Africa.
Oliver, Caroline. Western Women in Colonial Africa. 1982. On
the role of wives of colonial officials and women missionaries in the colonies.
Oliver, Roland, and Anthony Atmore. Africa Since 1800, new
ed. 1994. A classic account of modern African history.
Vandervort, Bruce. Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa, 1830–
1914. 1998. A brief account of the conflicts between Europeans and Africans during the New Imperialism.
NOTES
1. Journal Officiel (November 29, 1869), quoted in Georges
Douin, Histoire du Règne du Khédive Ismaïl (Rome: Reale
Societá di Geografia d’Egitto, 1933), 453.
2. E. Desplaces in Journal de l’Union des Deux Mers (December 15, 1869), quoted ibid., 453.
3. Michael Adas, Islamic and European Expansion (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 365.
4. “Correspondence and Report from His Majesty’s Consul
at Boma respecting the Administration of the Independent State of the Congo,” British Parliamentary Papers,
Accounts and Papers, 1904 (Cd. 1933), lxii, 357.
5. Robert W. July, A History of the African People, 3d ed. (New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980), 323.
6. George Shepperson and Thomas Price, Independent African (Edinburgh: University Press, 1958), 163–164, quoted
in Roland Oliver and Anthony Atmore, Africa Since 1800,
4th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994),
150.
7. Thomas Edson Ennis, French Policy and Development in
Indochina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936),
178, quoted in K. M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance (New York: Collier, 1969), 167.
8. Quoted in Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, The Colonial Heritage of Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 151.
Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
796
CHAPTER 27 The New Imperialim, 1869–1914
AP* REVIEW QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 27
1. Which of the following would have been a motive of
nineteenth-century European imperialism?
(A) The desire to develop the industrial base of former
colonies
(B) The desire to gain control of foreign companies
(C) The belief in the superiority of Western technology
and Western culture
(D) The desire to hem in Islam and prevent its growth
in other parts of the world
2. A colony that retained its traditional government, even
a monarch, but had a European “resident” or “consulgeneral” to “advise” it was a
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
province.
enclave.
crown colony.
protectorate.
3. In the early stages of European and American
colonial expansion,
(A) European and American women were seldom part
of the settlement.
(B) westerners had to teach people how to trade.
(C) taxes were always kept low to avoid rebellion.
(D) missionaries were always the first ones to arrive.
4. Unlike West Africa, equatorial Africa in the
nineteenth century
(A) readily accepted the Europeans as colonizers.
(B) had not developed any sort of trade network and
had little to trade.
(C) was governed directly by the European nations that
colonized the region.
(D) was of little interest to the European colonial
powers.
6. One of the only African kingdoms to defeat a European
attempt to colonize it was
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
Liberia.
Senegal.
Congo.
Ethiopia.
7. One common way of recruiting workers in African colonies was through
(A) the use of slaves.
(B) the use of a variety of taxes, which forced the Africans to work for wages.
(C) emigration from European nations with too many
people.
(D) the confiscation of land from those who refused to
work on government projects.
8. Particularly in Southeast Asia, areas were coveted as
colonies because
(A) they were close to China.
(B) they had good mineral deposits.
(C) commercially valuable plants could be grown
there.
(D) indigenous populations had been weakened by
disease.
9. One reason for American expansion in the Pacific was
(A) the desire to prevent the British from controlling
the Pacific Ocean trade routes.
(B) the U.S. demand for high-phosphate fertilizers
derived for guano.
(C) a European depression that had caused a decline in
the demand for American goods in Europe.
(D) the fact that U.S. industries were producing more
goods than they could sell at home.
5. In South Africa, the British attempt to take control of
Transvaal and the Orange Free State
(A) succeeded only when malaria wiped out the resident population.
(B) met with support from the native tribes.
(C) led to the South African War.
(D) encouraged farmers to settle in the region.
796
Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
Conclusion
10. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
European nations invested in Latin America, but they
refrained from territorial acquisitions because
(A) they had exhausted their funds for building new
colonies.
(B) as former colonial powers, they had good relations
with Latin America.
(C) Latin America was not politically stable.
(D) they feared the United States would invoke the
Monroe Doctrine.
797
12. One result of imperialism is that it
(A) increased population in remote and unpopulated
regions of the world.
(B) opened the world to increased trade and
communication.
(C) led to decreased warfare.
(D) gave non-Europeans more wealth.
11. One good example of U.S. imperialism in Latin America
would be
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
U.S. intervention in Panama.
the United States loaning money to Haiti.
U.S. protection of Mexico against a French invasion.
U.S. government loans to Latin American nations
wishing to build a modern military force.
797
Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.